A CALL TO NEW ZEALANDERS

Forest and Bird, Issue 53, 1 August 1939, Page 10

A CALL TO NEW ZEALANDERS

WAKE UP OR PERISH!

Although a disastrous flood occasionally makes New Zealanders think of the need of wellplanned action against the soil-destroying forces of erosion, the general public tends to lapse into apathy. The people are more concerned with minor things of the moment, matters under the eye, than with the less visible problems of saving the country. . In The Rape of the Earth,” Dr. R. O. Whyte, Ph.D., Deputy Director Imperial Bureau of Pastures and Forage Crops, Wales, has a passage which should make New Zealanders wake up and take notice. “The most urgent problem in New Zealand,” he writes, “is the control of floods and the prevention of the excessive washing of soil down the short river courses into the sea, a process which threatens to leave the country like an ‘emaciated skeleton.’ Deforestation by cutting, burning, or overgrazing of the undergrowth in the mountain areas by sheep, cattle, deer and other animals has greatly accelerated run-off and soilwash, and there is hardly a river in the country which is not affected by periodic flooding. The fact that these rivers frequently pass through rich dairying country combines with the mountain damage to make the conservation of soil, water and vegetation a pressing problem in New Zealand.”